Top Thirty Errors That Doomed McCain

Pajamas Media ^ | November 4, 2008 | Jennifer Rubin

[yankeedame]

Top Thirty Errors That Doomed McCain

The results are in and the recriminations have begun. Sure, it might not have made any difference, but the number of sins of omission and commission by the McCain campaign is breathtaking. Let’s get a head start on the finger-pointing and give you the top thirty mistakes John McCain and his team made:

• Not pursuing the Reverend Wright connection, as an issue of judgment and then credibility. Even Jerry Nadler knew it was a sign that Barack Obama lacked political courage, i.e., character.
• Waiting until September to raise Barack Obama’s other troubling connections (e.g., Bill Ayers, Rashid Khalidi).
• Failing to devise a comprehensive economic message until the final weeks of the campaign.
• Failure to explain the Democrats’ role in the financial meltdown.
• Not enough talk about “friends of Angelo” and Democratic corruption.
• Wasting his convention speech on “bipartisanship” and biography instead of pounding home a core economic message.
• Frittering away time and money in Iowa.
• Losing time in the spring when McCain had sewn up the nomination but Obama had not. An ideal time to begin defining the contrast in messages.
• Appallingly deficient “oppo” research and timing. Why didn’t the “bankrupt the coal industry” tape come out before the final weekend?
• Going to war with the MSM without an effective plan to use alternate media to get their message out.
• Cutting off McCain’s daily access to the traveling press corps.
• The frenetic response to the financial meltdown. (Fire Chris Cox! Cancel the debate — no, hold the debate!) All that was missing was juggling knives on a tightrope above a fire pit.
• The roll-out of Sarah Palin.
• The internal trashing of Sarah Palin.
• The failure to put Sarah Palin on every radio and TV outlet they could find in the final two weeks of the campaign.
• The failure to find a top-flight economic advisor.
• Shutting down McCain’s regular contact with new media outlets.
• An insufficiently tough attack on Joe Biden’s lobbying and earmark activities.
• An insufficiently tough attack on Obama’s coziness with the Daley machine.
• An insufficiently tough attack on Obama’s ties and subservience to Big Labor.
• Failure to use McCain’s position in the U.S. Senate to introduce legislation and force votes on the floor that would have defined the two candidates (e.g., a budget freeze).
• Permitting chaos and public fighting among campaign staff. Heads should have rolled.
• Waiting too long to introduce the specter of undivided government.
• Waiting until the final Saturday Night Live before the election to show self-deprecating humor.
• Not firing Palin’s entire staff when they publicly trashed her.
• Insufficient registration and party-building efforts in Colorado and Virginia.
• Too much whining about the MSM.
• Too much hostility toward conservatives offering smart strategy and policy ideas.
• Not enough explanation and focus on Tony Rezko.
• Not enough explanation of the Herbert Hoover analogy (higher taxes and protectionism made the Great Depression worse) to a voting population that doesn’t know who Hoover was.

There is no telling whether some or all of these errors made a difference. Certainly it was the toughest of years for Republicans. Nevertheless, the campaign was one of the worst displays of organizational and ideological disarray in recent memory. Future candidates should take note of the errors and the error-makers and plan their campaigns accordingly.

[HamiltonJay]

Yes, it certainly does appear that the economy was what doomed McCain.

[Avid Spectator]

“because the anti-American UN forces were here”

I think you’re confusing OECD election observers, invited by the State Department, with UN troops. Easy mistake.

[adorno]

Underlying all those errors is the worst error of all...

He didn't have enough funding to run an effective campaign in all the states where he needed to fight. He accepted federal funding, which was a drop in the bucket compared to the campaign financing Obama got from "contributions". If you don't have the financing, you can't run all the ads needed, and you can't get around to all the places needed.

In effect, the biggest mistake was McCain's involvement with the McCain-Feingold act which he hoped would take big money out of elections. It ended up taking big money out of McCain's campaign and allowing Obama to have obscene amounts of money with which to swamp McCain.

Another major error: McCain wasn't black enough. If McCain had been just half-black, he might have stood a chance this time around when being black was a key factor.

[YankeeReb]

Don’t be shocked when the Gestapo comes to your door.....

Just as an aside. Weren't the Gestapo formed as a civilian corps and given the same funding as the military? When Barry made that statement all I could think of was the German SA.

[Tenniel2]

The O-stapo.
Coming soon, in their nice clean crisp sky-blue shirts.

[gogeo]

There are any number of themes that could have won the day. For all Obama had going for him, and for all McCain struggled against, this was a winnable contest.

McCain, for all of his personal virtues, has no political ones. He seems to have the two confused.

[luckystarmom]

Republicans did not select him. It was the open primaries that allowed independents and democrats to select him.

[ExTexasRedhead]

The Gestapo was formed with mentally ill psychos and I’m sure Hussein Hitler Obama’s will be the same. This time it will be Liberal psychos.

[luckystarmom]

How do caucuses work???

[gogeo]

Not true, but Chris Matthews and the rest of the MSM (you know, McCain's constituency) did abandon McCain for someone farther to the left...

Ah yes, a subset of PC Poker, Media Poker.

A Maverick trumps his 'Pub party, but The One trumps a Maverick.

[Big Horn]

McCain didn't have ACORN or the MSM.

[Brookhaven]

Party members get together at various sites in the state to vote for their candidate. The important point to remember is that it is people in the party (who have been following the candidates) and not the general public (who may know nothing more about a candidate than what they see in a 30 second commercial) that decide the nominee.

[j_k_l]

Romney would have won. Case closed.

Now that is funny!

McCain kicked his @ss.

Obama would have slaughtered him.

[luckystarmom]

I just want republicans picking our nominee.

[driftless2]

In my opinion the failure to counter the left's explanation of the financial debacle doomed McCain. Immediately after the crash, the left flooded the media with the message (lie) that conservative Republicans aka greedy bankers had solely created the calamity. McCain did nothing to counter that lie, in fact he reinforced it, and he and Palin reiterated the lie about greedy bankers.

If McCain had immediately gone on tv with a clear, forthright explanation of how the Dem-controlled FM fiasco was the culprit, he might have had a chance. Before the disaster McCain/Palin were leading in the polls. One week after the catastrophe, they were behind and never caught up. Millions of Americans bought the Dem lie about conservative responsibility. Too little, too late did McCain mention the role of the Dems, and Obama in the scandal.

[driftless2]

"incompetence"

You mean incompetently killing Hussein, destroying most of Al-Qaeda, keeping us safe for seven years, cutting taxes, and appointing two conservative supreme court justices? Was that incompetent?

[j_k_l]

My wife, who pays little attention to politics says the debates killed McCain because he came off as a weird old man.

I think if he would have voted NO on the bailout it would have been huge. He came out strong against earmarks and then helped write and voted for a bill full of them.

[Infidel Puppy]

1) Not defusing and emasculating the insane Left’s ACORN-related ballot stuffing machine in 2000-2008

[Bombshell]

EXACTLY RIGHT!!!!!!!! Paulson was also in the take for Zero

[Moonman62]

The way he justified the war in Iraq was incompetent. Looking at how much it cost, that money probably could have been better spent or saved elsewhere. We could have overwhelmed Afghanistan while keeping Iraq contained for far less.

As far as keeping us safe, I guess we aren't going to count the killings, rapes, and other crimes committed by his precious illegal aliens.

All of W's tax cuts failed to stimulate the economy except the one that was done in 2003, which was authored by Bill Thomas and others in Congress, not W. His demand side stimulus packages have all been predictable failures too.

We did get two good justices, but the Harriet Miers fiasco was out of this world. And now because of W's incompetence we are going to have the most liberal member of the Senate appointing justices for at least the next four years.